376 Tucker Brooke, 



Where neither Chorus wafts you ore the seas ; 



Nor creaking throne comes downe, the boyes to please ; 



Nor nimble squibbe is scene, to make afear'd 



The gentlewomen.''" 



A similar reference occurs in the prologue ('Spoken at the Globe') 

 to Shirley's Doubtful Heir, which was licensed in 1640: 



Without impossibilities the plot: 

 No clown, no squibs, no devil in 't. 



It is clear that in Stuart times the excesses of actors and revampers 

 had caused the public to forget the poetry in the play. 



Uncanny occurrences are reported to have attended various 

 performances. Middleton (?) in the Black Book (1604) alludes 

 to one : 



Hee had a head of hayre like one of my Diuells in Doctor Faustus, when 

 the olde theater crackt, and frighted the audience."' 



Prynne in Histrio-Mastix (1633) tells how the actual devil once 

 appeared among the feigned ones at a performance of the play: 



Not to relate the various tragicall ends of many, who in my remembrance 

 at London, have beene slaine in Play-houses, or upon quarrels there com- 

 menced, . . . together with the visible apparition of the Devill on the Stage 

 at the Belsavage Play-house,^ in Quccne Elizabeths dayes, (to the great 

 amasement both of the Actors and Spectators) zvhiles they ivere there pro- 



"" Compare the stage direction near the end of the 1616 version of Faustus: 



'Musickc ivhile the Throne descends.' In the first line quoted Jonson 

 probably has in mind both the Chorus in Shakespeare's Henry V and also 

 the one which in the 1616 Faustus describes the hero's journeys. 



"" Bullen's Middleton, viii. p. 13. It is possible that the allusion is not to 

 any actual occurrence at a performance of Marlowe's play, but to the tale 

 of an optical illusion recorded in the eighth chapter of The Second Report 

 of Doctor John Faustus, published in 1594. Here we read of a 'goodly 

 stage' which appeared in the air above the heads of the spectators. A play 

 was performed, and finally, 'When Faustus hauing long raged, of a soddaine 

 howling lowde and tearing his haire, laid both his arms vpon his necke and 

 leapt down headlong of the stage, the whole company immediatly vanishing, 

 but the stage, with a most monstrous thundering crack followed Faustus 

 hastely, the people verily thinking that they would haue fallen vppon them 

 ran all away, and he was happiest that had the swiftest foote ..." (Ed. 

 A. E. Richards, p. 75.) 



°* The Bell Savage Inn on Ludgate Hill was one of the five regularly 

 used for dramatic performances by the greater troupes of actors. Cf. 

 Adams, Shakespearean Phiyhouses, p. 7. 



