133 
SITTING ON THE STAGE 
Thomas Dekker later, remembering Jonson’s satire upon him? 
' in Poetaster (ca, April, 1601) and the punishment he himself 
administered through Satiromastix* (summer, 1601) by having 
Horace [Jonson] tossed in a blanket, unequivocally in this in- 
stance has in mind the custom of sitting on the stage as being at 
Blackfriars.* 
In 1601, Hamlet, in the excitement of bitter joy at the close of 
the play before the King, finds in the custom a means of satiric 
exultation.> Indeed the whole play within the play,—not as a 
new form, for it was old, but in manner,—seems intended for 
Blackfriars done in miniature, with grandees, even of the Ham- 
let sort, in patronizing display, familiar ease, and chorus-com- 
ment on the mimic stage. 
George Chapman’s All Fools, at Blackfriars after close of the 
1603 plague, twice shows us the audience on the stage. The Pro- 
logue defers humbly to their judgments and craves their special 
thought, some friend, or well- toral or Comedy, Morall or Trag- 
wisher to the house: and here I edie) you rise with a screwd and 
enter. discontented face from your stoole 
1 Child [Nat  Field].—What, to be gone: no matter whether the 
upon the stage too? 
2 Child [Jack Underwood].— 
Yes; and I step forth like one of 
the children, and ask you, Would 
you have a stool, sir? 
—In this quotation I have used 
the Gifford-Cunningham edition, 
and inserted the names of the Boy- 
actors who played these parts in 
the first representation at Black- 
friars. They are easily determin- 
able from the Jnduction itself. 
*Infra, 171. 
* Supra, 75°. 
"Infra, 171. 
““Now sir, if the writer be a 
fellow that hath either epigrammed 
you, or hath had a flirt at your 
mistris, or hath brought either your 
feather, or your red beard, or your 
little legs &c. on the stage, you shall 
disgrace him worse then by tossing 
him in a blancket, or giving him 
the bastinado in a Tauerne, if, in 
the middle of his play (bee it Pas- 
scenes be good or no; the better 
they are the worse do you distaste 
them: and, beeing on your feet, 
sneake not away like a coward, but 
salute all your gentle acquaintance, 
that are spread either on the rushes, 
or on stooles about you, and draw 
what troope you can from the stage 
after you.’—Thomas Dekker, How 
a Gallant should behaue himself 
in a Play-house, chapter VI of The 
Guls Horn-Booke (1609), in The 
Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas 
Dekker (ed. Grosart, The Huth Li- 
brary, 1885),, II, 243. 
“Would not this Sir, and a For- 
rest of Feathers, if the rest of my 
Fortunes turne Turke with me; 
with two Prouinciall Roses on my 
rac’d Shooes, get me a Fellowship 
in a crie of Players sir.”—Mr. Wil- 
liam Shakespeares Comedies, His- 
tories & Tragedies (folio 1623), 
The Tragedie of Hamlet, [III, ii] 
p. 268D. 
247 
