scenes whilst they are varied." Behind this "perspective" was the "scene"-the space for properties and scenery-which closed at the end of each act. And in the second act occurs the interesting direction, "Whilst the following song is singing they descend from the Scene and present Bellamina to Physander." This obviously does not mean that the characters descended from the stage into the pit of the theatre; consequently we are justified in thinking that here the "scene," corresponding to the inner, or rear stage, was elevated, and that the characters descended therefrom to the stage in front of the arch or "front." IV. PROLOGUES, EPILOGUES, AND CURTAINS Although large front curtains were unquestionably employed on the pre-Restoration court stage, and although they were in all probability sometimes used on the university stage of the early seventeenth century, it is by no means certain that they were ever used in the regular London theatres of the private type. That stage curtains of some sort were commonly used in all the regular Elizabethan playhouses, both private and public, there can be little doubt; but in the opinion of the vast majority of scholars these curtains were never hung at the front of the projecting stage, but were suspended from the edge of the upper stage, or balcony, thus concealing only a comparatively small part of the large stage space. Now with these two types of curtain in mind, it will perhaps be worth while to attempt to settle the minor, but interesting, question as to whether the practice of opening and closing the stage curtains in connection with prologues and epilogues varied at different times and on different stages during the pre-Restoration period. In the first place, one can be pretty certain that in the regular Elizabethan playhouses, the curtain-contrary to the later customwas never opened until after the completion of the prologue;18 and a passage in Massinger's Guardian (III, vi) argues that the same was true with respect to the induction: "This is but an induction; I will draw The curtains of the tragedy hereafter." It is entirely probable that the statements just made apply also to those stages on which large front curtains were employed. That there was, however, at least one exception before the Restoration in 18 Note especially those cases where the prologue-speaker himself draws the curtain at the con clusion of his speech: Merry Devil of Edmonton, Catiline, Whore of Babylon, David and Bethsabe. favor of the modern practice is indicated by the stage directions in Davenant's The First Dayes Entertainment at Rutland-House (1656): "After a Flourish of Musick, the Curtaines are Drawn, and the Prologue enters." At the conclusion of the prologue occur the words, "The Curtaines are clos'd again"; and they of course reopen at the beginning of the "entertainment" proper. Evidence has been given elsewhere19 to indicate that the curtains of the regular Elizabethan theatres were never left open at the end of the play; and it is hardly necessary to state that the front curtains were regularly closed at the conclusion of court plays.20 One interesting case illustrating this custom will nevertheless be pardoned, since it has not been used by students of Elizabethan stage practices. At the end of the 1653 edition of Henry Killigrew's Pallantus and Eudora a note informs the reader that, since the play was originally intended for the entertainment of the king and queen at York House,2 it "had Scenes fitted to every passage of it throughout”; and, describing the last scene, the note goes on to say that "about the middle of the last Stanzo [of concluding song] Timens puts a lighted Torch to the bottome of the Pile [funeral pyre] which gives fire to some Perfumes laid there on purpose;22 the which wraps the Pile in smoak, and smells ore all the Roome. At the End of the Song the Curtain falls, and shuts both Scene and Actors from the Beholders Sight."23 21 Since in later times the epilogue-as distinguished from the socalled “tag”—was regularly separated from the action of the drama by the fall of the curtain, the question arises as to whether the same custom was observed on the pre-Restoration stages. The evidence indicates that such was by no means a common practice on the regular, the university, or the court stage. The epilogue to Lingua, for 19 Court and London Theatres, p. 20. Cf. also p. 9 note. 20 Of course this was also true of masques. 21 The pirated edition of 1638 says the play was intended for the nuptials of Charles Herbert and Lady Villiers. 22 There can be little doubt that the funeral pyre at the conclusion of The Tragedie of Dido was similarly cut off from the "Beholders Sight" by the closing of the large front curtain which opened at the beginning of the play. 23 This production, as the extremely interesting prefatory epistle tells us, was written when the author was seventeen (i. e., ca. 1630) and was acted at the Blackfriars theatre. Fleay (Biog. Chron., II, 23) asserts that it was the first case of "scenes" being used in the regular London theatres. Does not the passage quoted above indicate that a front curtain was also employed at the Blackfriars performance? Without going fully into the matter, I will say that a strong case can be made out for the employment of front curtains in the private theatres, at least during the reign of Charles I. How, for example, is one to explain the situation in A Wife for a Month (II, vi), where a curtain is drawn and Cupid descends in a chariot, "the graces sitting by him," unless the direction be a survival of the performance at St. James's? Again, a front curtain was apparently used in Nabbes' drama-like Microcosmus (1637), presented at Salisbury Court. example, an early university play, was certainly spoken before the closing of the curtain; and the epilogue to Strode's Floating Island (Oxford, 1636) apparently indicates the same practice: "Each breast Will cease its Floating, and as firmly rest As doth our Scene. One Passion still would prove An Actor when the Scene is shut, Our Love." Again, at the end of the epilogue to Tancred and Gismunda, an early court play, Julio says, "Now draw the Curtaines, for our scene is done"; and the same practice is indicated in the late compositions of Nabbes. Contrary to the usual custom, his masques are supplied with epilogues. Time speaks the epilogue to the "Presentation," intended for the Prince's birthday, May 29, 1638, the production ending with the direction, "Time being received into the Scaene it closeth"; the epilogue to The Springs Glory is followed by the direction, "The Spring being received into the Scaene it closeth"; and at the end of Microcosmus, presented at Salisbury Court, occur the words, "The dance being ended, they returne to their first order, whil'st Love speakes the Epilogue: which done, he is receiv'd into the Scene, and it closeth." Finally, it may be noted that this practice of speaking the epilogue before the closing of the curtains was carried over into the Restoration playhouses. There is no doubt, then, as to the usual practice of Elizabethan theatres; still it may be noted in conclusion that there is at least one passage which indicates that sometimes the epilogue was spoken after the stage curtains had closed. This passage appears in Henry King's Dirge (published in 1657): "It [Life] is a weary enterlude Which doth short joyes, long woes include. The Acts vain hope, and vary'd fears: The Scene shuts up24 with loss of breath, The matter discussed above is, as I have already said, comparatively unimportant, but it is at least interesting to know that what in the pre-Restoration period was obviously the exception with respect to the manipulation of the stage curtain in connection with both prologue and epilogue became the rule in later times. Trinity College, N. Carolina THORNTON SHIRLEY GRAVES 24 Here, as in the passages quoted from Strode and Nabbes, the shutting or closing of the "Scene" is equivalent to the closing of the stage curtain. Το many critics it has seemed that the pastoral element in Shakespeare's plays has small significance because he nowhere introduces, with seriousness, the conventions of the genre. Pastoral drama in England is represented, according to this view, by the Arraignment of Paris or The Faithful Shepherdess, but not by As You Like It or The Winter's Tale.1 Such an exclusion, however, is surely illogical. To say that because Autolycus is unlike Corin and Daphnis, therefore The Winter's Tale has little or no relation to pastoral literature is no more reasonable than to say that because in the Henry V trilogy we are more interested in Falstaff or Fluellen or Justice Shallow than in the strictly historical material, therefore these plays do not belong to the chronicle history group. Shakespeare extended and enlarged the scope of comedy, history, and tragedy, yet the classification of the First Folio is convenient and not inaccurate. In As You Like It, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale he dealt with material drawn from pastoral romance in such a way as to deepen and enrich certain characteristics of this genre; he did not write pastorals of the conventional Renaissance type, yet the pastoral element in his plays is both considerable and important. In the present study I shall discuss two topics: first, the relation of Shakespeare's pastorals to a well-defined type of plot-structure which, originating in Daphnis and Chloe and modified by certain Italian and Spanish elements, found its first complete English expression in Sidney's Arcadia, and, second, Shakespeare's development from a criticism of the absurdities of pastoralism coupled with a somewhat conventional use of the country vs. town motif to a much deeper interpretation of one of the most interesting phases of Renaissance thought. 1 As examples of many expressions of such views compare Smith, "Pastoral Influence on the English Drama," in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 1897, pp. 378-381: "In The Winter's Tale the pastoral element borrowed from Greene's Pandosto is so completely subordinated that we can hardly say it exists at all. Who would speak of Perdita as an Arcadian?" He makes a similar remark concerning As You Like It. Schelling (English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 386) says that As You Like It is no true pastoral, since the genius of its author "could not be bound within the conventions of a form of literature so exotic and conventional"; and of The Winter's Tale (pp. 389-390) he says that the outdoor scenes "are pastoral only in the sense that they deal with shepherds and their life." Greg (Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, p. 411) says: "It is characteristic of the shepherd scenes of that play (sc. Winter's Tale), written in the full maturity of Shakespeare's genius, that, in spite of their origin they owe nothing of their treatment to pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life as it mirrored itself in the magic glass of the poet's inspiration;" and his comment (pp. 412-413) on As You Like It mainly consists of generalizations about the beauty of "the faint perfume of the polished Utopia of the courtly makers." I. THE INFLUENCE OF SIDNEY AND SPENSER Daphnis and Chloe supplied the chief elements in the plot of a type of pastoral which was used, with some modifications, by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. The romance is too well-known to need detailed exposition; the main points may be summarized as follows: Two foundlings are brought up by rustics whom they regard as their parents; their childhood is described in detail, and the manner in which they became lovers; the purity and sweetness of this love idyl are emphasized; character contrast is supplied by means of a rude lover, the rival of the hero, who is also a coward; disguised as a wolf, he attacks the girl, who is rescued by the hero. Later, wicked men attempt without success to kidnap the boy, the rival being slain in the encounter, and the incident is repeated in the captivity of the heroine by outlaws. At length the lovers are reunited; wealthy parents come and recognize them, and they are happily married. This is the story, in brief, of the only true Greek pastoral which influenced English literature; other Greek romancers, such as Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, stressed the wanderings of the lovers and introduced various other elements which are without significance in the present study. The Italian and Spanish pastoral romances, such as the Ameto, the Arcadia, and the Diana, have little relation to this plot; they introduce various love idyls and go back to the Virgilian eclogues. But with them the element of allegory is introduced; there is the further important influence of style, particularly the interweaving of prose and verse; and in the introduction of the author, often as a disappointed lover who is living for the time among shepherds, a noteworthy addition to the dramatis personae was made. From these various sources, all well known in the England of Sidney's time, a composite plot was formed, the essentials of which are as follows: 1. A child of unknown parentage, usually a girl, is brought up by shepherds. As a variant, the heroine may merely be living in seclusion among shepherds. 2. A lover is introduced, who may be a foundling, or, more commonly, a man of high birth who falls in love with the heroine and for her sake adopts the dress and the life of a shepherd or a forester. 3. This love story is complicated by the rivalry of a blundering shepherd, usually characterized as a coward, his function being to supply comedy and to serve as a foil for the hero. 4. Melodramatic elements are supplied by the attack of a lion or a bear, and this affords the hero another opportunity to prove his prowess. 5. A captivity episode is usually introduced; the heroine is stolen by pirates or outlaws; the hero goes to her rescue. 6. At length it develops that the girl is of high birth, and she marries the hero. |