— oe 
a declaration to be impeached.’ 
SITTING ON THE STAGE 131 
The only other known mention 
in a play acted at Paul’s is sufficiently definite to tell us that Paul’s 
is not meant.? 
Else we should have the anomaly of the players 
uttering gratuitous self-detraction. 
This exhausts both the Paul’s list of references,*? and the evi- 
dences on that side of the question that assumes the existence of 
the custom in any other theatre than the Blackfriars up to 1604. 
Between 1597 and 1604, every identifying evidence of sitting 
on the stage is associated with Blackfriars. 
low, no public theatre of this period had the custom.* 
Also, as shown be- 
The logi- 
cal conclusion is that every allusion to the practice within these 
limits refers to Blackfriars, whether specifically so declared or 
not. 
+ Atticus says to Philomuse (sup- 
posed gallants on the stage), “Let’s 
place ourselves within the curtains, 
for good faith the stage is so very 
little, we shall wrong the general 
eye else very much.”—John Mars- 
ton, Induction to What You Will, 
in Marston’s Works (ed. Bullen, 
1887), II, 325. Acted at Paul’s ca. 
April, 1601. (Cf. Plays, complete 
work, vol. II.) 
*“Courtesan.— . . . I know some 
i th’ town that have done as 
much, and there took such a good 
conceit of their parts into the two- 
penny room, that the actors have 
been found 1’ th’ morning in a less 
compass than their stage, though 
twere ne’er so full of gentlemen.”— 
Thomas Middleton, 4 Mad World 
My Masters, in Middleton’s Works 
(ed. Bullen, 1886), III, 347. Acted 
at Paul’s ca. 1606(?). 
SA stage-direction in W. Percy’s 
The Faery Pastorall (published 
from MS. by Joseph Haslewood for 
The Roxburghe Club, 1824) re- 
quires a word here. After mention- 
ing stage-properties to be used, the 
author says, “Now if so be that the 
Properties of any of These, that be 
outward, will not serue the turne 
by reason of concurse of the People 
on the Stage, Then you may omitt 
the sayd Properties” &c. 
What stage does Percy mean? 
It is not infrequently supposed that 
this play was acted at Paul’s. The 
author in writing had in mind all 
possible companies that might ac- 
cept his plays, and would have been 
glad to appear at Paul’s. This is 
shown by “A note to the Master 
of the Children of Powles” (printed 
in Collier, op. cit.,? III, 181) at the 
close of Necromantes; also in the 
directions concerning the double 
closing of The Faery Pastorall (in 
op. cit. supra) and in the direction 
for the Prologue in The Cuck- 
queanes and Cuckolds Errants 
(idem). 
But there is no evidence that The 
Faery Pastorall or any other play 
in the MS. volume by Percy was 
ever acted by any company. His 
works doubtless belong to that nu- 
merous host (cf. Collier, op. cit.,? 
III, 231-32) that, for unsuitable- 
ness or other reasons, never trod 
the boards. Hence I set no special 
value upon the elaborate and im- 
possible stage-directions or other 
items taken seriously by many as 
touching vital points in stage-his- 
tory. But see on the contrary Carl 
Grabau, Zur Englischen Biihne um 
I600 in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 
(1902), XXXVIII, 285; G. F. Rey- 
nolds, Some Principles of Eliza- 
bethan Staging, in Modern Phi- 
lology (1904-5), II, 607 (later 
published separately) ; G. P. Baker, 
The Development of Shakespeare 
as a Dramatist (1907), 76-77. 
*Infra, 136-38. , 
245 
