In Act 3 of Marlowe’s Faustus, Mephistopheles arranges for Faustus to take a journey over Europe. Faustus rides, in both the A and the B texts, on “a chariot . . . drawn by the strength” of “yoky” or “yokèd” “dragons’ necks.” The B text is more specific about the form of the “chariot.” Faustus is “mounted then upon a dragon’s back.” He passes, among other places, over Padua, where “a sumptuous temple stands/that threats the stars with her aspiring top.” The pontifical basilica of St. Anthony in Padua featured two very tall steeples. At the end of his journey, Faustus arrives in Rome, where he meets Mephitopheles in the pope’s own “privy chamber.” From there, Mephistopheles notes, Faustus “mayst perceive what Rome containeth to delight thee with,” or, in the B text, “contains for to delight thine eyes.” Mephistopheles then describes the city in detail.
In our usual view of such matters, audiences at Henslowe’s Rose theater were expected to imagine all these objects as they were described by the Lord Admiral’s Company actors. Properties and scenery, we believe, were sparse on the Elizabethan stage. Let’s see if that’s right. Let’s start by looking at Henslowe’s inventory of Lord Admiral’s properties. The inventory and four other related inventories, as I’ve shown in a 2015 Review of English Studies article, were prepared in March 1599. It was, as I discussed, certainly not a comprehensive inventory of the company’s properties.
Yet there we find a “dragon in fostes,” presumably Faustus’s dragon-chariot itself. And a “chayne of dragons,” probably the dragons by whose yokèd necks the chariot was drawn. There are also “ij stepells,” very possibly the two steeples of St. Anthony’s in Padua. Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, Henslowe has a “sittie of Rome.” That must have been a tableau of the city itself, the one which Faustus “mayst perceive” as Mephistopheles describes it to him.
It’s time to rethink our belief that properties and scenery were sparse. That’s really just a belief. One which lacks evidence and which we ought to reexamine. The evidence suggests, in contrast, that properties and scenery were in fact common on the Elizabethan stage, at least when the plays were performed in London. Henslowe’s inventories are a good place to start. One could perhaps infer the existence of the properties apparently used in Faustus from the play’s text, but they are nowhere mentioned in the stage directions. We know about them only from the inventories. But stage directions also provide a rich source of information. And other sources provide relevant information.
I’ve spoken on this topic both at the 2019 Blackfriars Conference in Staunton, Virginia, and in a February 24, 2020, podcast with Cassidy Cash on That Shakespeare Life. Here I propose to explore the topic in greater detail than the time limits of those talks allowed.
Other works that explore this topic include Cecile de Banke, Shakespearean Stage Production, Then and Now, Frances Teague, Shakespeare’s Speaking Properties, Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa, Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres, Keir Elam, Shakespeare’s Pictures, Visual Objects in the Drama, John Leland and Alan Baragona, Shakespeare’s Prop Room, and chapters by Tiffany Stern, Nathalie Rivere de Carles and Evelyn Tribble in Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern, eds. Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance. Other works must also be consulted, including the ever-useful Alan Dessen and Leslie Tomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580-1642, R.A. Foakes, ed, Henslowe’s Diary, Allardyce Nicoll, Stuart Masques and the Renaissance Stage, Allardyce Nicoll, The Development of the Theatre and R.A. Foakes, I1lustrations of the English Stage, 1580-1642.
Reasons for Objections
Before we examine the evidence itself, let’s briefly consider the reasons that probably underlie the common assumption. First, scholars long believed that Elizabethan plays could last no longer than two hours. An acting company might not have had time in such a period to handle elaborate properties and scenery. But, as a I showed in a 2010 Shakespeare Quarterly article, the Elizabethan performance event was a flexible vehicle. It could accommodate plays as long as three and one quarter hours. My conclusions have generally been accepted, but, inevitably, various objections have been raised, to which I have responded in a 2024 article in Theatre & Performance Notes and Counter-notes.
Second, the acting companies frequently toured, performing in smaller cities and in noble houses. It would have been impossible to bring elaborate properties and scenery on such tours, and probably impossible to use them anyway in such makeshift venues. But London theaters themselves were equipped with elaborate furniture not available to the companies on tour. A discovery space with access to a room behind the stage, wide doors on either side of the discovery space, a hut with machinery above the stage, and a trap door opening to a space with machinery below the stage. There was no reason to have this equipment in the London theaters unless use was made of it.
Third, Elizabethan play scripts typically include thorough word pictures describing the scene. Word pictures which the actors could by gesture have filled out. Why were those included in the play scripts if the things described were actually represented by scenery and properties? The answer relates principally to the second concern. On tour the companies lacked the properties and scenery. Word pictures had to suffice. Even in London they would have been necessary if an envisioned property wasn’t available or if the machinery wasn’t functioning. They would also have smoothed over any flaws in the properties or their operation.
Lastly, Shakespeare several times suggests, especially in Henry V, that the audience should imagine things that are not actually represented on the stage.
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work.
* * *
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.
Into a thousand parts divide one man
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’th’ receiving earth.
But these suggestions by Shakespeare show that the audience was accustomed to seeing physical representations. If the audience already knew that the stage would be bare of properties and scenery, why was it necessary to ask in such elaborate terms for their indulgence for their absence?
Machinery Above the Stage
We opened with the dragon-chariot in Faustus, presumably Henslowe’s “dragon in fostes.” So let’s begin by looking at the evidence that concerns properties operated by machinery in the hut above the stage. The chorus in the play tells us that Faustus “did mount himself to scale Olympus’s top, being seated in a chariot.” When he is done he has “passed with delight” Germany, France and Italy. At the end of his journey, Faustus “arrive[s] at Rome,” his “resting place,” where he has commanded Mephistopheles to conduct him, and where he meets Mephistopheles in the pope’s chamber.
Before the chorus begins, its discussion suggests, the “dragon in fostes” has been placed on the stage, led by the “chayne of dragons.” They apparently are connected to machinery in the hut. As the chorus proceeds the actor of Faustus (Edward Alleyn) steps into the chariot and it is hoisted aloft to about mid-height. The chariot seems to move over the stage while Alleyn mimicks observing various things. Then it returns to the stage where Alleyn meets the actor of Mephistopheles, and together they survey Rome from the pope’s chamber.
Faustus was by no means the only play in which an actor ascended from, descended to, or seemed to move over the stage riding an object. It’s a long list and we can’t cover them all. Indeed, Faustus wasn’t even the only play in which the flying object was a chariot. In John Fletcher’s 1624 masque, A Wife for a Month, the stage directions specify that “Cupid and the Graces ascend in the Chariot.” And Henslowe’s properties inventory identifies another, “Faeton charete,” Phaethon’s chariot. That chariot no doubt was used in a 1598 play by Thomas Dekker which Henslowe calls, in various spellings, Phaethon. The play is lost, but we may deduce its contents from Dekker’s classical sources.
Phaethon is the son produced by a liaison between Helios, the god of the sun, and Clymene, a lesser deity. As a young man, Phaethon seeks his father out and asks to drive his chariot, a wish which Helios only reluctantly grants. Phaethon proceeds to drive the chariot erratically, rising too high, threatening to freeze the earth, and dropping too low, threatening to set the earth on fire. To prevent such a conflagration, Zeus strikes him down with a thunderbolt. In order to represent the play’s essential action, the acting company needed the ability to make the airborne chariot seem to move over the earth and to raise and lower it.
In addition to chariots, many other objects descended from or ascended to the heavens. Eagles and clouds, for example. In Shakespeare’s Cymbeline “Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle.” In Thomas Heywood’s Golden Age “Jupiter . . . ascends upon the Eagle.” In Aurelian Townsend’s masque, Tempe Restored, “Jove sitting on an Eagle is seene hovering in the ayre.” Inigo Jones’s design for this affect survives and is reproduced in Nicoll’s Stuart Masques. It’s a very impressive eagle indeed, considerably larger than the actor of Jove riding it. Clouds, then. Heywood’s Silver Age specifies that “Jupiter descends in a cloude.” Later, he “ascends in his cloud.” The anonymous Love’s Mistress has “Cupid descending in a cloud.”
The most common objects bearing actors who descend and ascend from and to the heavens were chairs and thrones. Those objects were so common that in the prologue to the folio version of his 1598 play, Every Man in His Humor, we find Ben Jonson satirizing plays in which a “creaking throne comes down, the boys to please.” Henslowe records an expense in 1595 of £7 for “mackinge the throne In the hevenes.” Somewhat unusually in the Diary this was an expense of the house itself, not a loan to the acting company occupying the theater. That fact again suggests just how common descending thrones were.
Accordingly, many stage directions call for descending and ascending thrones and chairs bearing actors. Let’s take just a few examples. In Robert Greene’s Alphonsus of Aragon Venus exits, and “if you can conveniently, let a chair come down from the top of the stage, and draw her up.” In Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, “Fortune takes her Chaire, the Kings lying at her feete, shee treading on them as shee goes up.” The dialogue then makes it clear that she rises in her chair and hovers above the stage, berating the kings below for their presumptuousness. In the B-text of Faustus, the Good Angel describes the happiness Faustus could have enjoyed in heaven, and the stage directions say: “Music while the throne descends.” The Good Angel then presumably ascended in it. In Looking Glass for London, by Greene and Thomas Lodge, Oseas the prophet is “set down over the Stage in a Throne.”
It’s important to inquire into the specifics of the machinery above, located in the hut. How were these ascents and descents accomplished mechanically? In order to keep three dimensional objects such as chariots and thrones stable on these descents and ascents, there must have been four winches above the stage, pulleys with handles each turned by a coordinated team of four stagehands. For the actors’ safety the devices may have had some sorts of emergency brakes to prevent sudden descents.
Also for safety reason, the winches must have been mounted on a rail or rails. They could have been affixed to the floor. But that would have allowed only for unidirectional, straight up and down vertical motion. Yet Faustus calls for Faustus to make a journey over Europe and Phaethon must have made a journey in his chariot over the earth. Plays which called for gods and other figures to descend from the heavens presumably needed to show the figures moving back to front, seeming to come closer to the audience as they reached the stage. And the other way around as they ascended. The company could not risk the possibility of an unguided rolling winch or winches falling through the hole in the heavens. That may well have been fatal to the actor in the flying object. So rails were necessary.
All this machinery explains why Jonson’s descending thrones were “creaking.” Elizabethans did have lubrication, but a certain amount of squealing metal must have been unavoidable.
The geometry of the rail or rails is an interesting question. The chariots would seem to require a lateral motion, as Faustus surveyed Europe below or Phaethon mismanaged his chariot as he flew over the earth. Thrones, eagles and clouds, on the other hand, would seem to require a back to front motion, so the objects appeared to grow closer to the audience as they descended, and to recede as they ascended. A system of both lateral and front to back rails in the hut would have been impossible for a joiner to support without four posts in the middle of the stage. A joiner could, however, build a square hole into the floor of the hut without such posts. And a single circular rail could have been constructed around that square hole.
Such a circular rail could be employed to create the illusions both of lateral and back to front motion. Faustus and Phaeton could have begun their chariot journeys facing west, or left, and ended them facing east, or right. That would produce the effect of lateral motion. Thrones and eagles could have begun their descents facing northwest, at 120 degrees away from the audience, and ended them facing south, directly in front of the audience, zero degrees. That would produce the effect of forward motion on descents, and, in reverse, motion away from the audience.
Another interesting question is how the winches were connected to the chariots, thrones, etc. Elizabethans did have both steel and wire. But would the Lord Admiral’s have trusted the metallurgy enough to put Edward Alleyn, the butter on their bread, in a chariot held aloft by wire? Maybe. Actors then were also acrobats in their incidental entertainments. The other possibility is that the connections were ropes. If the ropes were painted the same color as a backdrop cloth, they would have been little more noticeable than wire. Presumably the color ordinarily would have been sky blue. This question leads naturally to our next two topics, curtains and hangings, and then painted cloth backdrops.
Curtains and Hangings
Now let’s look at curtains and hangings on the back wall of the stage. To some extent that topic also involves painted cloth backdrops hung there as well, but for the most part we’ll take up backdrops in the next section.
Many stage directions, as Dessen and Thomson note, call for curtains to be drawn, revealing matter within the discovery space. Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, for example, opens with this stage direction: “Here the Curtains draw, there is discovered Jupiter dandling Ganymede upon his knee, and Mercury lying asleep.” Sometimes the curtain is called an arras, although that word typically means something more like a tapestry. In Marlowe’s part two of Tamburlaine, for example, “The arras is drawn, and Zenocrate lies in her bed of state.” The curtains in these cases presumably were draped only in front of the discovery space, not the whole back wall. And, as the discovery space was level with the stage, the curtains presumably were hung from halfway up the wall, below the balcony or alcove space.
Curtains were also used in front of the balcony or alcove space. Antonio and others in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge look up expecting to see his beloved Mellida from behind the balcony’s stirring curtain. Instead, as the stage directions tell us, “The curtain’s drawn, and the body of Feliche, stabb’d thick with wounds, appears hung up.”
Those inferences about curtains are supported by three engravings on the printed title pages of dramatic works. All three are only notational renderings, not precise representations, but they illustrate the relevant points clearly enough. The title page of Henry Marsh’s The Wits, published in 1662, features a rendering of several performances at the Red Bull, an outdoor theater. One curtain is hung in front of the discovery space. A different curtain is hung in front of the balcony space. The title page of William Alabaster’s Roxana, published in 1632, shows a curtain hung in front of the discovery space, or perhaps the lower half of the entire back wall.
And the title page of Nathaniel Richards’ Messalina, published in 1640, and possibly concerning the Salisbury Court theater, merits special attention. It shows a curtain, illustrated with various figures, hung across the lower half of the entire back wall. Across the upper half of the entire back wall is a painted cloth, of a type to be discussed shortly. The cloth shows the exterior of a stone building, with a window. The window is in the lateral middle of the wall, where the balcony or alcove space would be. A curtain is hung across the window.
Evidently, then, curtains could be hung in front of the discovery spaces alone or across the full length of the back wall’s lower half. They also could be hung in front of the balcony space. And, if as in the Messalina drawing, a painted cloth could be hung across the full length of the upper half of the back wall, so too could curtains. We may be certain, in any event, that there were rods at the top of the full lengths of the back walls, because they would have been necessary to hold theater hangings. Those hangings evidently covered the entire back wall. They almost necessarily had slits at the discovery space and side doors, or perhaps cutouts in the shapes of those openings. Dessen and Thomson record many references to such hangings, noting that the hangings apparently were “hung just in front of the tiring-house wall.” Let’s consider those hangings more particularly.
Before and periodically during a tragedy the back wall of the stage was hung with black drapes. Many examples tell us so. In A Warning for Fair Women the figure of Tragedy wins her debate over the figure of Comedy about the nature of the play that is to follow when she points out: “Look Comedie, I markt it not till now, the stage is hung with blacke; and I perceive, the Auditors preparde for Tragedie.” 1 Henry VI opens with Bedford’s declaration, “Hung be the heavens with black!” The hangings may have been made of black velvet. In Dekker and John Webster’s Northward Ho!, Bellamont describes a play he is writing for the French Court, with “the stage hung all with black velvet, while tis acted.” A Warning goes on to describe, somewhat more vaguely, “these sable curtains.” The luxurious fur of the animal may seem darker than mere black, as when Hamlet declares “let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables.” Presumably, however, A Warning refers to curtains made of velvet, not sable fur.
A brief excursion is in order here. Many figures on the Elizabethan stage are described as vanishing. The three witches in Macbeth, to take an obvious example, vanish twice. Macbeth and Banquo express their astonishment. How were these disappearances managed? They would have been feasible if the black hangings were up, with three slits, especially if the hangings were made of black velvet. Sometime after April 3, 1598, Henslowe bought for the Lord Admiral’s “a robe for to goo invisibell.” In the last of his five inventories he records several black velvet cloaks, such as “j longe black velvet clock, layd with bro[a]d lace black.” With a few squibs to distract the audience momentarily, the actors could have whirled into black velvet cloaks, or any black cloth cloaks, and disappeared behind the slits in the black hangings.
The near certainty that back wall hangings were used, especially for tragedies, presents an interesting problem. Likewise the sky-blue painted backdrops, to be discussed next, that probably were used for descents from, and ascents to, the heavens. The famous drawing of the Swan stage by Johannes DeWitt shows people sitting in the upper space of the back wall. So do the engravings in Roxana and The Wits. Those people could conceivably be musicians or other workers associated with the stage production. But it’s quite possible that they are spectators. How could spectators have seen the play if there were hangings or painted backdrops in front of them? We’ll just have to guess. They sometimes could see only parts of the play, especially if it was a tragedy. That may not have mattered to them. How well could they have seen and heard the play from behind anyway? They probably were there as much to be seen as to see.
Painted Backdrops
Painted cloths displaying background scenery would have been hung from the same rods as the hangings. Such cloths were common objects in Elizabethan England, depicting all manner of subjects. They were used to decorate and insulate houses, from those of yeoman farmers to those of the nobility. The materials, skills and artisans necessary to create such cloths were thus readily available to the acting companies. We should be surprised if they did not take advantage of that opportunity to create background scenery for their plays.
Painted cloths were used extensively for background scenery in court masques. Nicholl shows this in abundant detail. It’s true that we don’t have similarly extensive records regarding the use of painted cloths by the acting companies in their theaters, but that is an artifact of historical chance. The royal court kept extensive written records, many of which are preserved. Acting companies’ transactions were more ad hoc, and there was little need to preserve their records.
We do have Henslowe’s Diary and associated records, and I will turn to them next, but it needs to be emphasized first that these records are often misunderstood. Henslowe most certainly does not record every purchase by the Lord Admiral’s company during the years of his Diary. He records his loans to the company when they needed to borrow money from him to make a purchase. When they bought things with their own money, or when he bought things on behalf of the house that they might use, none and few of those transactions will appear in the Diary. Not to mention that we have only a quite incomplete set of Henslowe’s records. The inventories are helpful, but, again, as I point out in my 2015 RES article, they do have serious limitations.
Now, back to the subject. Most conspicuously in Henslowe’s properties inventory we find “the clothe of the Sone & Mone.” We don’t know what play this cloth is for, but it clearly is a painted cloth of background scenery. It presumably didn’t show the sun and the moon at the same time. So it probably was hung from above and pulled laterally across the stage, alternately showing the sun, then the moon. Such manipulation is suggested by a stgage direction in John Fletcher and Nathan Field’s Four Plays in One: “One half of a cloud drawn. Singers are discovered: then the other half drawn. Jupiter seen in glory.” The cloud presumably was painted on a cloth divisible in the middle, the left half pulled away first, then the right. Similarly, in Heywood’s Golden Age, Jupiter “drawes heaven” and then Iris descends. “Heaven” presumably was a cloth painted sky blue with clouds and pulled across the stage.
But “the clothe of the Sone & Mone” almost certainly is not the only painted cloth in Henslowe’s properties inventory. “Ierosses head, & raynbowe,” for example. Iris is a minor goddess, the personification of the rainbow. As an immortal, she could not have been beheaded, so her head could not have been a stage object representing a severed head. Rather, it must have appeared in the background in large scale. Similarly, a rainbow could not have been offered on the stage as a physical object, because rainbows themselves are not physical objects. Again, it almost necessarily was shown in a painted background cloth. Very probably, Henslowe was recording one cloth, both Iris and the rainbow painted on it.
Lastly, with respect to the properties inventory, let’s consider “the sittie of Rome.” A subject with which we began this post. Faustus completes his journey over Europe when he lands in Rome, specifically in the quarters of the pope himself. From this perspective Mephistopheles shows him Rome and describes the tableau. They see the “seven hills” upon which Rome is built. The “winding banks” of the Tiber, which runs “through the midst” of the city, “cut[ting] it in two parts.” The “four stately bridges” that cross the Tiber. One of them is the “Ponte Angelo,” at one end of which “erected is a castle passing strong.”
As Faustus has now landed, he and Mephistopheles are looking at Rome on the stage itself, and from the perspective of the pope’s quarters. Those would be his quarters within the Apostolic Palace. The pope had alternate quarters in the Castel Sant Angelo, which he used in times of civil distress, such as the sacking of Rome by the forces of Charles V in 1527. But, as the Castel Sant Angelo, the “castle passing strong,” is included in Mephistopheles’s tableau, he and Faustus could not be standing in it.
A painter of cloths could fairly easily have produced a “sittie of Rome” from this perspective. There are many engravings of Rome in this period. None of them, presumably, was drawn from the exact perspective of the Apostolic Palace, but several appear to have been drawn from the perspective of St. Peter’s, very near the Palace. They show all or most of the features described by Mephistopheles. Any one or pair of them could have served as the basis for a painter of cloths for “the sittie of Rome.” Again, the cloth would have been hung from the back wall of the stage, where the audience would see it as well.
Let’s move on to documents of a different kind, engravings on the title pages of printed Elizabethan plays. Discussion of the first two engravings must be preceded by a quick review of pertinent stage directions. Several dozen stage directions call for characters to appear “on” or “upon the walls.” More call for characters to “scale the walls.” These directions usually are accompanied by dialogue that refers to the walls. But in many instances there is no such dialogue. How did the audiences know in those cases that the lower back-stage wall represented a fortress wall? And even when the dialogue does refer to the walls, if the playwrights were relying on the dialogue alone to inform the audiences, why wouldn’t “above” have sufficed in the stage directions? Why specify “walls?”
The answer to these questions probably is that stone walls were represented in front of the lower back-stage walls on painted cloths. The cloths would have been hung below the balcony space, so that the characters who appeared on or upon the walls could have appeared above the cloth, in the balcony space. Characters who scaled the walls would have some space above the walls to gain. We don’t have an exact representation of such a wall in a title page engraving. But two such engravings show the likelihood. The Messalina engraving, as we’ve already noted, shows at the top half of the back wall an exterior stone wall. Except for the window in the middle, the engraving almost necessarily represents a cloth of background scenery, painted to resemble a stone wall. The 1620 title page of Swetnam, the Woman Hater shows a court of women assembled to try the aforesaid Swetnam. They surely are assembled in an indoor space. But the background is a stone wall.
Interior walls are a trickier question, as no stage directions would or do refer to them. Title page engravings do seem, however, to show that painted cloths of interior walls were hung in front of the backstage wall. Swetnam shows, again, the staging of Swetnam’s trial with an interior stone wall in the background. The wall contains four diamond paned windows. The 1633 quarto of Arden of Faversham and the 1634 quarto of Heywood’s A Maidenhead Well Lost both feature engravings depicting each play’s climactic scene. They contain various embellishments, because the scenes in the scripts did not unfold exactly as shown. But they’re still basically accurate. In both engravings, there’s a back wall holding two diamond paned windows. The 1630 quarto of Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay has an engraving featuring a medley of events from the play. That engraving, too, shows a back wall with, among other objects, a bookshelf and a window.
An especially interesting engraving of an interior wall appears on the title page of the 1616 quarto edition of our favorite play, Dr. Faustus. The engraving depicts a particular moment in the play. In his study, Faustus steps into a circle inscribed with “Jehovah’s name” and numerous symbols for the saints and stars. With that circle to protect him, Faustus proceeds to conjure the devil in Latin. Among other things he incants “surgat Mephistophilis,” let Mephistopheles ascend. And again he concludes, “ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis,” of my accord now by our command let Mephistopheles ascend. Then Mephistopheles does ascend, reflected in the stage direction as “Enter a Divell,” but Faustus is repulsed by his appearance. He commands, in English:
I charge thee to returne and change thy shape.
Thou art too ugly to attend on me.
Goe and returne an old Franciscan frier.
That holy shape becomes a divell best.”
The figure of the devil says nothing. Mephistopheles speaks only when he returns as a Franciscan friar.
This is the scene depicted on the 1616 title page. The engraving shows Faustus standing within the circle called for by the stage directions inscribed with numerous symbols. A genuinely hideous figure of the devil is only half ascended. That was, I take it, a carved stage property propelled upward by machinery below the trap door. The devil in the script says nothing at this point, after all. It’s sometimes speculated that this property was the “dragon in fostes” in Henslowe’s properties inventory, but I doubt that. As depicted in the engraving the devil is indeed hideous, but he is a humanoid figure, not a dragon.
Because the engraving depicts the scene as actually staged, the details of the scenery are of some interest. Again an interior back wall is shown, presumably a painted cloth. At its middle, the wall holds a diamond paned window. To the right it shows a three dimensional holy cross and a bookshelf. The bookshelf holds three clasped books and a circular object containing a cross. To the left is an armillary sphere, an ancient astronomical tool. All these objects, apparently, were drawn upon the wall. The bookshelf shows no visible means of support, nor the armillary any means of suspension, so they were not real three-dimensional objects. But all the objects were meant to appear to be three dimensional. Except for the window, they all have hash marks to the left to indicate that they cast shadows. The hash marks for the armillary, which would have been hung in space, are the longest. The window would have been set in the wall, which is why it is accompanied by no hashmarks.
The armillary and the holy cross are objects relevant to Faustus’s project here. The window, the bookshelf and the clasped books show that he is in his study. Did the engraver imagine all that? Or did he record what he saw and remembered from the stage? That latter seems the likelier case. None of those objects is mentioned in the text. How would the engraver have known about them if he had not seen them? And if he saw them he must have seen them on a painted background cloth.
Before we leave Faustus on this subject, let’s take a moment to consider another passage that appears only in the B-text. The stage direction has: “Hell is discovered,” presumably meaning that a curtain is drawn. Then the Bad Angel proceeds to describe what Faustus is seeing:
There are the furies tossing damned soules
On burning forkes. Their bodies boyle in lead.
Their alive quarters broiling on the coles
That ner’e can die. This ever burning chaire
Is for ore-tortur’d soules to rest them in.
These, that are fed with soppes of flaming fire,
Were gluttons, and lov’d only delicates.
It seems altogether improbable these events actually were staged. The Bad Angel, presumably, is narrating the scene as depicted upon a vividly painted cloth.
Painted Cloth Floor Coverings
Our consideration of painted background cloths brings into relief a closely related topic, painted floor cloths. It’s a relatively minor topic, so let’s not spend long. No doubt many plays were presented simply “on the boards,” the floorboards of the stage, and several depictions seem to reflect such presentations. But most of the engravings that we have of stage presentations seem to show painted cloth floor coverings. Again, such coverings were common in England. They kept out drafts from below the floors. So the actors were readily able to access the artisans who made such floor coverings.
Many title page engravings of play performances depict what are, presumably, painted cloth floor coverings. Those of Swetnam, Friar Bacon, and Faustus depict rectangular tiles laid out in grids, long sides front to back. Those of Arden and A Maidenhead show broad, laterally laid, floorboards. Those might conceivably have been the stage boards themselves, but stage boards could not have been so clearly perceptible as the boards shown in the engravings. Rectangular tiles along the lines of those in Swetnam, etc., are also depicted underneath portraits of the subject characters in the 1606 quarto of Nobody and Somebody and in the 1623 quarto of Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, i.e. Queen Elizabeth. Interestingly, and uniquely, the engraving in the 1611 quarto of Thomas Dekker’s Roaring Girl shows the title character (in male clothes) standing on floorboards laid out vertically, front to back.
Title page engravings, as we have seen, are closely related to the appearances of the plays as they were performed. And, with respect to painted cloth floor coverings, the evidence they provide probably must suffice. We have little documentary evidence of such cloths.
The one exception concerns Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII. Sir Henry Wotton tells us in 1613 that the play was presented “with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage.” Wotton could have meant that the use of matting was by itself a circumstance of extraordinary pomp and majesty. But, by itself, mere matting of the stage would not seem to merit such a description. More probably, Wotton meant that even the stage’s matting was elaborately decorated. That inference may be confirmed by a title page engraving in the 1613 quarto of Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, another play about Henry VIII. Rowley wrote that play around 1604. Its republication in 1613 no doubt was prompted by the appearance of Henry VIII that year. It shows the subject character standing on an elaborately painted floor cloth. We can see that it is a cloth because of its folds.
Scenery Placed on the Stage Itself
Background scenery was not the only scenery represented on the Elizabethan stage. A great deal was also mounted on the stage itself. We’ll pass over the common objects – tables, chairs, tableware, beds and thrones – that necessarily appeared in many plays. Those technically were properties anyway, as they presumably were manipulated by the actors. Let’s focus here on objects placed on the stage that we might not expect nor likely were manipulated by the actors. As we noted at the outset, Henslowe’s properties inventory has “ij stepells,” very possibly the two steeples of St. Anthony’s Basilica in Padua, which Faustus observes on his flight over Europe.
Faustus also observes on his flight “learnèd Maro’s golden tomb,” i.e. Virgil’s tomb. A great many stage directions call for tombs, many of them to be opened. Henslowe’s properties inventory, correspondingly, identifies “j tome of Guido,” “j tome of Dido,” and just “j tombe.” The properties inventory also has “j littell alter.” Many stage directions call for altars. The properties inventory has “j wooden canepie.” And again, several stage directions call for canopies, some stationary, some carried out over an actor. Canopies, presumably portable, were also required for the many nobles who, according to the stage directions, entered “in state.” Then, tents. The properties inventory includes no tents. But they are called for upon the stage in many stage directions and descriptive play dialogues.
The most common articles of scenery mounted on the stage, apparently, were trees. Henslowe’s properties inventory has three of them, “j baye tree,” “j tree of gowlden apelles,” and “Tantelouse tre” (Tantalus’s tree). Stage directions and play dialogues correspondingly refer to many individual trees. The stage directions of George Peele’s Battle of Alcazar require a tree that revolves over a fire, and upon which multiple crowns are hung, each of which in turn falls off. In Peele’s Arraignment of Paris, Paris and Oenone “sit under a tree togeather.” In Dekker’s If This Be Not a Good Play, Lucifer “sits under the tree.”
Several sources tell us, moreover, that the stage held whole arbors of trees. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, for example, tells us of Horatio that Lorenzo and his crew “hang him in the Arbor.” An arbor which Isabella later “cuts downe.” “Doune with these branches and these loathsome bowes,” she cries, “Downe with them. . . . rent them up.” Similarly, in Heywood’s Brazen Age, Hercules enters “tearing downe trees.” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has: “Enter Brutus in his orchard.” In addition to these playscripts, we have the eyewitness testimony of Simon Forman. He describes a 1611 performance of Macbeth, including the scene in which Macbeth and Banquo encounter the three witches. “Mackbeth and Bancko, 2 noble men of Scotland, Riding thorowe a wod, the[re] stode before them 3 women feiries.” The “wood” Forman saw evidently did appear on the stage. It isn’t discussed in the dialogue.
Forman’s description of Macbeth and Banquo as “riding” through the wood raises an interesting question, albeit a slight excursion from the subject of scenery. Were they really riding on horses through the wood? After all, the Chorus in Henry V tells the audience at the outset that it must “Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them / Printing their proud hoofs i’th’ receiving earth.” But an entire cavalry of horses would, of course, have been impossible to put on the stage, whereas two horses might have been possible. Stage directions of three other plays, as Dessen and Thomson show, explicitly call for single horses to appear on the stage. They carry either a corpse or a live character from the play. And Thomas Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament has: “Enter Bacchus riding upon an Asse.” Kyd’s Soliman and Perseda: “Enter Basilisco riding of a mule.” A little later, Piston joins Basilisco. He “getteth up on his Asse, and rideth with him to the doore.” And Forman, after all, was an eyewitness. He probably didn’t just imagine Macbeth and Banquo riding through the wood.
Trees appear not just on the fixed stage itself, but also rising and descending, presumably through the trap door. Peele, in The Arraignment of Paris, instructs “Heereuppon did rise a Tree of gold laden with Diadems and Crownes of golde.” But shortly thereafter, “The Tree sinketh.” Fletcher and Shakespeare tell us in Two Noble Kinsmen that a hind descends and “in the place ascends a Rose Tree.” In Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, two trees are brought onto the stage, one “faire” the other “withered.” A little later, while the priest sings, “the rest set the trees into the earth.” And in A Warning for Fair Women the conspirators are about to embrace when “suddenly riseth up a great tree between them.” The tree symbolizes the soon to be murdered Sanders. Browne, who will murder Sanders, cuts it down.
So, another short excursion from the subject of scenery. In addition to trees, figures and/or objects rise from or descend below the stage in many plays. We’ve already looked at Faustus, where Faustus calls in Latin upon Mephistopheles to ascend. The quarto’s engraving shows the figure of the devil half ascended. In George Peele’s Arraignment of Paris “Pluto ascendeth from below in his chaire.” In Macbeth, near the end, each of the three apparitions “descends,” and a little later the cauldron sinks, as we know because Macbeth asks: “Why sinks that cauldron?” Apparently, the theaters had machinery below the stage trap door to manage the raising and lowering of a platform upon which these objects and figures were set. That must have involved some kind of screw mechanism that the stagehands could turn around.
Stagehands must have been very busy in Elizabethan theaters. Now in the heavens operating the machinery there. Now in the basement operating the machinery there. Now behind and on the stage managing the background and on-stage scenery. They surely earned their pay. And this was yet another subject that playwrights had to consider. They couldn’t write in descents from the heavens closely followed by ascents from hell, nor even new background scenery. They had to allow time for the stagehands to move from place to place. I’ve written in a prior post about many other practical considerations that playwrights had to take into account. Writing an Elizabethan period play was no easy task.
So, back to the subject of on-stage landscaping. Banks and bowers. Henslowe’s properties inventory has “ij mose bancks,” two moss banks. Several plays’ stage directions call for landscaped banks. The dumbshow in Hamlet, for example, has “lies him down on a bank of flowers.” As the dumbshow contains no dialogue the bank almost necessarily was represented. Similarly, the stage directions to Anthony Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon call for a tableau: “Curtaines open; Robin Hoode sleepes on a greene banke, and Marian strewing flowers on him.” Several stage directions call for a “bower.” They could have been referring to what other directions call an arbor. But more probably they referred to an overhead covering of intertwined branches or vines. In Peele’s Arraignment, the Gods are set as a tribunal “in Dianaes bower.”
One last area of on-stage scenery should be considered. Items placed above the trap door to represent entrances to regions below. Let’s return once again to our favorite play. At the end, Faustus is in both texts dragged down to hell by the devils. He exclaims: “Ugly Hell, gape not!” And in Henslowe’s 1599 properties inventory we find a “Hell mought.” Um, “mouth.” That very probably was a representation of the gate to hell, through which Faustus was dragged down. No doubt it was ugly and it gaped. Several Elizabethan plays refer to caves from which characters ascend or into which they descend. In John Lyly’s Woman in the Moon, for example, “Stesias riseth out of the cave.” In all these cases, presumably, the cave entrance was placed above the trap door. So also, presumably, was the “Hell mought” that very probably was used in Faustus.
But caves and hells could also have been represented at the back of the stage on the flat surface. The French ambassador reports that an “ugly hell” was represented at court in Jonson’s Masque of Queens, evidently discovered by the drawing of a curtain. Nicholl suggests that the ugly hell in that masque may have resembled the Vulcan’s cave used in an Italian drama, the engraving of which he reproduces. Several stage directions, catalogued by Dessen and Tomson, refer to caves from which characters enter or into which they exit, without suggesting that they rose or descended.
Properties
We’ve already incidentally discussed many stage properties. Flying dragon chariots, descending thrones, horses, asses, etc. And many properties were used in almost every play, chairs, tables, tableware, beds, thrones, etc., which we need not discuss. Here let’s take up less common properties that were brought out onto the stage from the horizontal entrances.
Let’s start with Trojan Horses, a rather specific, but necessarily spectacular category of special properties. Henslowe’s 1599 properties inventory has “j great horse with his leages.” That horse undoubtedly was employed in a play first performed by the Lord Admiral’s as “new” in 1596, the anonymous and now lost Troy. Then, the Second Part of Iron Age. Heywood probably wrote the play in 1613, although he could have written it as late as 1632. The play has the Trojans, as in Virgil’s Aeneid, recognizing the departure of the Greeks in their ships. A ruse, of course, as every reader of the Aeneid knows. Then, the stage directions say, “The Horse is discovered.” Aeneus exclaims: “Soft, what huge Engine’s that?” When Synon unlocks it, “Pyrhus, Diomed, and the rest, leape from out the Horse.”
So what can we say about these Trojan Horses? They must have been impressive properties, large enough to hold several actors. The great size of the Horse is referenced several times in the dialogue of Iron Age. And it apparently actually was large enough to hold at least two adult actors, those of Pyrhus and Diomed, and two boy actors, who are greeted separately as “My urchin!” and “my Toad!” The actors would of course have been compacted in the Horse the way a dozen circus clowns must have been compacted within a Volkswagen, when circuses still existed, before they emerged to run amok. Nevertheless, we’re still talking about an impressive property. Henslowe’s properties inventory tells us that the Horse’s legs were detachable from the body. No doubt this allowed easier storage.
The many chariots that appeared on stage must also have been impressive properties. We’ve noted before that Henslowe’s properties inventory includes both a “dragon in fostes” and a “Faeton charete,” both of which, presumably, were flying chariots. But chariots also apparently appeared on the stage horizontally, drawn in upon wheels. Particularly well known, in that regard, is part 2 of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine enters “drawn in his chariot” by rulers whom he has conquered, “with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them.” A good many more plays have chariots drawn upon the stage. Just a few examples. Peele’s Battle of Alcazar has “Enter the Moore in his Chariot.” Heywood’s Silver Age has “Enter Pluto, his Chariot drawne in by Divels.” Fletcher and Field’s Four Plays in One has “Enter . . . a Chariot with the person of Time sitting in it, drawn by four persons.” Philip Massinger’s Roman Actor has “Enter . . . Domitian in his triumphant chariot.”
Chariots also often appeared in court masques, often drawn by various animals or representations of animals. Nicholl illustrates his discussion of the subject with several contemporary designs and drawings.
Cauldrons next. Henslowe’s properties inventory has “j cauderm for the Jewe.” That would be the boiling cauldron into which Barabas is dropped at the end of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. The three witches in Macbeth mix a fiendish stew in a cauldron that boils and bubbles. Macbeth enters a little later, only to be deceived by the witches’ misleading prophesies, and then asks: “Why sinks that cauldron?” The cauldrons in Jew of Malta and Macbeth both evidently were made to appear to boil. How the actors managed that trick I won’t speculate, but by now I think we’ve figured out that they were far more capable of representation than we often have supposed.
Execution machinery was also employed on the stage. Henslowe’s properties inventory lists “j frame for the heading in Black Jone.” The play is spelled “Blacke Jonne” in Edward Alleyn’s list of plays he has acquired. The play, evidently, featured a machine for beheading the eponymous character, Black Joan. I imagine the play concerned Joan of Arc, Jeanne d’Arc in French, “d’Arc” pronounced, more or less, “dark.” Joan was of course burned at the stake by the English for heresy, but in the Lord Admiral’s now lost play she may instead have been beheaded. Any attempt to represent a burning on the stage would likely have proved difficult. A machine that facilitated a fake beheading could more easily be managed. Ask any magician.
Several plays call for gibbets or gallows on the stage. In Sir Thomas More, for example, the stage directions call for the Sheriff’s men to “set up the gibbet” from which John Lincoln is a short while later hanged. Pedringano, in a famous scene from Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, is hanged on the stage. The machinery is described no more specifically than “gear,” “a halter,” and “the rope,” but Pedringano and the hangman do go “up,” from which location the hangman “turns him off.” All of which pretty much required a gallows on the stage.
Many plays have kings and bishops. Stage directions, accordingly, call for a great many crowns. Presumably many of the bishops wore miters atop their heads. But Faustus calls for more specific crowns and a specific miter. In Act 1 Faustus expresses his desire for Mephistopheles to make him “great emperor of the world.” And in Act 2 devils give Faustus “crowns and rich apparel.” Henslowe’s properties inventory, correspondingly, contains not just any crown or crowns, but “iij Imperial crownes.” Pope Adrian VI appears prominently in Act 3. And the inventory contains not a bishop’s but a “poopes miter.”
Now, a potpourri of properties. Henslowe’s properties inventory includes “j cage.” That, we may reasonably believe, was used in performances of Tamburlaine, Part 1, where the conquered Turkish sultan is kept in a cage, except when he is let out to serve as footstool for the conqueror Tamburlaine. The inventory also includes a “Belendon stable,” no doubt used in the play that Henslowe records as “Bellendon.” That apparently was the stable of Belin Dun, a notorious highway robber. The play of Phaethon, which we have previously discussed, apparently required two staircases. The inventory records: “j payer of stayers for Fayeton.” Perhaps they were used by Phaethon to board his chariot.
We’ll conclude here by discussing heads not severed from human bodies. Again, it’s an almost endless topic, but we’ll make do with a few examples. Henslowe’s properties inventory contains, among other such heads, a “bores heade,” a “bulles head,” and two “lyon heades.” Correspondingly, boars’ heads are called for in the stage directions to Lyly’s Woman in the Moon and Heywood’s Brazen Age. Brazen Age’s stage directions also call for a bull’s head. And Heywood’s Silver Age calls for a lion’s head. Midsummer Night’s Dream, as we all know, requires the head of an ass.
Disembodied brass heads, presumably in human form, are called for by two Robert Greene plays, Alphonsus of Aragon and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. In Alphonsus the head both casts out tongues of fire and speaks in the ventriloquized voice of Mahomet. In Friar Bacon the head flashes lightening and speaks, after intervals: “Time is; time was; time is past.” The actual appearance of the head on the stage is corroborated by the engraving on the title page of the play’s 1630 quarto edition. It shows a brass head, several times larger than the human heads in the scene, seemingly suspended in space. Three speech bubbles extend from its mouth echoing its words in the play: “Time is; time was; time is past.”
The brass heads in Greene’s plays will call to mind for readers of Macbeth the “armed head” conjured up by the witches. That presumably was a human head, no doubt exaggerated in size, wearing a helmet. It may have symbolized the very real severed head of Macbeth soon to be brought on the stage.
Human Heads and Portraits
As we’ve learned by now in this essay, Elizabethan acting companies were far more capable of producing realistic effects on the stage than we have commonly supposed. So let’s close the essay by circling back to a subject I discussed several years ago, severed human heads, then to a closely related subject, human portraits. Many Elizabethan plays feature recently severed heads. I argued, in a 2015 RES article and in a post that year to the OUP Blog, that those heads were realistic representations of the actors in character when the characters had been alive. I don’t have much to add. Except to note that my arguments in those articles are reinforced by the evidence we have examined here that Elizabethan acting companies actually did produce realistic effects.
So let’s finish with the closely related subject of human portraits on the stage. Perceptions on this subject are influenced by two well-known scenes involving portraits, those of Hamlet and Two Noble Kinsmen. In both, in often very similar language, two portraits are compared. The information provided in both plays’ texts allows for two different stagings. First, Hamlet and Emelia could have employed miniatures imperceptible to the audience. That’s a common staging today. But it’s also possible that two full-size portraits in Hamlet were already on the wall of Gertrude’s bed chamber, and that Emelia sets two full-size portraits on easels. In fact, as we shall see, realistic full-size portraits were routine on the Elizabethan stage. And we’ll return to the original staging of Hamlet and TNK before we conclude.
Let’s start where we usually have started, with the documentary evidence of actual Elizabethan stage properties, in this case, once again, Henslowe’s records. The properties inventory contains a “Tasso picter.” Tasso’s portrait no doubt was used in the now lost play Tasso’s Melancholy, “tassoes mallencoley” in the Diary. The play was performed 12 times in 1594/95, and apparently was revived late in 1602. It no doubt concerned what we would now call the bipolarity or schizophrenia of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. The portrait evidently represented the actor of Tasso in character at full size. There would have been no point in having a picture specifically of him if it were a miniature that the audience could not see. The Diary also has an entry in July 1598 for a sum of five pence “to geue the paynter in earneste of his pictor.” The date signifies that this “picture” was different from the Tasso portrait. And again it wouldn’t have been necessary to pay a painter for a portrait unless it were a full-size one, recognizable to the audience.
Many plays tell us that portraits similarly were shown to Elizabethan audiences in full size as accurate representations of the actors in character. Not always. In a few plays, the portrait actually was a miniature seen only by the actor. But there are a great many examples of full-size portraits. Let’s take just a few, more or less in chronological order.
In A Warning for Fair Women, Master Sanders is a leading citizen. His wife conspires with the adventurer Browne to murder him, so that she and Browne may carry on their illicit affair. Mistress Sanders is led in a dumbshow to “her husbands picture hanging on the wall.” Realizing that he is about to be murdered “she wringing her hands in teares departes.” The portrait hanging on the wall almost necessarily was a full-size representation of Master Sanders’s actor in character. No one in the play explains in words whom the portrait represents. In order to understand the silent action, the audience had to be able to identify the individual portrayed. Master Sanders had, at this point, appeared on the stage often.
In Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona Proteus asks Sylvia for the portrait of her that hangs in her chamber:
Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,
Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,
The picture that is hanging in your chamber.
* * * * *
And to your shadow will I make true love.
A short while later Sylvia delivers the picture to the disguised Julia, who is feigning to be Proteus’s servant, and tells her that Julia “Would better fit his chamber than this shadow.” Julia, with the portrait, pauses to contemplate it, “Here is her picture.” She compares its details to her own appearance, concluding that she is at least as comely. And she finishes: “Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up, for ‘tis thy rival.”
It will be obvious that Sylvia’s portrait is full-size. It has been hanging in her chamber, and is expected to be hung in Proteus’s chamber. When she contemplates it, Julia has set the portrait down for the audience to see, as we know because she enjoins herself at the end to “take this shadow up,” to pick it up. Her orally expressed examination of the picture shows that it must have resembled the actor of Sylvia in character. Her comparison of its features to her own is a variation on the picture comparison trope so common in Elizabethan drama, a subject which we will take up momentarily.
In John Webster’s White Devil the evil Duke Brachiano wishes to do away with his virtuous wife Isabella. His portrait hangs on a wall behind a curtain. The Duke’s agents spread poison oil on the portrait’s lips. As is her custom, Isabella comes that night “in her night-gowne . . . kneeles downe as to prayers, then drawes the curtaine of the picture, doe’s three reverences to it, and kisses it thrice.” She then faints and dies. The portrait could have performed all these functions, again, only if it were a full size representation of the actor in the character of Duke Brachiano.
In James Shirley’s The Traitor the Duke’s kinsman Lorenzo is seeking an accomplice to murder the Duke for him. But he decides that the prospective accomplice is too inexperienced for the job. He, on the other hand, has the relevant experience, having practiced upon the Duke’s own portrait. Here, the directions say, “He discovers the duke’s picture, a poniard sticking in it.” He notes that “the duke was painted to the life, but with this pencil to the death.” Again, we almost certainly are talking about a full-size portrait of the actor in character as the Duke. The Duke has appeared on the stage many times to this point. A poniard, or “pencil” as it were, could not be stuck into a miniature.
So, now, let’s return to Hamlet and Two Noble Kinsmen and finish this essay. The thing to keep in mind here is that Hamlet and TNK were not the only examples on the Elizabethan stage of the picture comparison trope. We have already noted one equivalent in Two Gentlemen. And the trope was sufficiently common to be satirized in two plays, Marston’s Antonio and Mellida and Dekker’s Satiromastix. The single portrait in Two Gentlemen was full-sized. So also were the pairs of portraits in Antonio and Mellida and Satiromastix.
In Antonio and Mellida Balurdo is the fool. He enters together with “a painter with two pictures.” Balurdo asks the painter: “And are these the workmanship of your hands?” The painter responds affirmatively. Balurdo examines the portraits and reads the inscriptions. “Whose picture is this? ‘Anno Domini 1599.’ Believe me, master Anno Domini was of a good settled age when you limn’d him – 1599 years old! Let’s see the other. ‘Aetatis suae 24 [in the 24th year of his age]’. By’r Lady, he is somewhat younger. Belike master Aetatis suae was Anno Domini’s son.”
All this nonsense essentially requires the two portraits to be set on easels so that the audience, as well as the actors, could see them. That’s why the stage directions specify that the painter enters “with two pictures.” Miniatures need not have been specified. The joke here was that both portraits, very probably, were of the same man, the playwright, John Marston himself, whom the audiences would have known well. He began his 24th year in October 1599 and, as the year 1599 lasted on the official calendar until March 25 in our year 1600, the play must have appeared between October 1599 and March 24, 1600. The joke could have been understood by Marston’s audiences only if they could see the two portraits. Only then could they see that Balurdo’s comparison of Marston with himself was absurd.
Dekker in Satiromaxtix similarly makes fun of a person very well known to the audience by making fun of his portrait. Captain Tucca and his boy enter, the boy “with two pictures under his cloake.” The object of Dekker’s satire is Ben Jonson, who had styled himself “Horace” in a prior play. Horace was an esteemed Roman poet. Jonson’s appropriation of the name was, in Dekker’s view, an act of audacity. Jonson’s face, as Dekker earlier points out, apparently was pockmarked by smallpox. Tucca proceeds to compare the two portraits. The one is of the real Horace, the Roman poet, the other of the pretend Horace, Jonson. “Heere’s the sweete visage of Horace,” he says, “no, Horace had not his face puncht full of Oylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan.” “Horace was a goodly Corpulent Gentlemen, and not so leane a hollow-cheekt Scrag as thou art: No, heere’s the Copy of thy countenance.”
Once again, these almost necessarily were two full-sized portraits. They were first concealed under Tucca’s boy’s cloak, a concealment unnecessary if the portraits were miniatures. The audience did not know what the Roman Horace looked like, but they surely knew what Jonson looked like. And the actor of “Horace” in Satiromastix surely was made-up to resemble Jonson, hollow cheeks, pockmarked face, and all. To make the picture comparison satire work, the audience must have been able to see the two portraits. The one of the real Horace, corpulent and clear-faced. The one of Jonson, scraggly and pockmarked.
With that background let’s return to the portrait comparisons in Two Noble Kinsmen and Hamlet. The evidence isn’t quite as clear in those cases, but I want to suggest that their portrait comparisons were part of the larger portrait comparison trope. A trope which otherwise called for realistic, full-size portraits available to be seen by the audience. Let’s take TNK first. Emelia enters “with two pictures.” Which, presumably, she sets up on easels. She then addresses her soliloquy to the two portraits, those of her two suitors, Arcite and Palamon. She generously praises Arcite’s appearance and gently disparages Palamon’s. Mid-speech she decides between them. “On my knees, I ask thy pardon.” She is addressing the portrait of Arcite. Then she turns to the other portrait. “Palamon, thou art alone and only beautiful.”
It wouldn’t have been impossible to represent all this with miniatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the tenor of the play, nor would the action have been easy for the audience to understand. If the playwrights had intended two miniatures, why did the stage directions specify that Emelia enters “with two pictures?” Any small flat objects could have served for miniatures. Emelia never says that she is looking at two pictures. If the pictures were miniatures the audience had to infer that they were portraits, an inference which would not have been easy to draw. Emelia does not mention Arcite’s name until seven lines into the soliloquy, and Palamon remains unnamed through fully 36 lines. And when she does decide, and kneels to ask Arcite’s pardon, Emelia does not name Arcite. If she were holding up a miniature, the audience could not have known at that moment whom she was addressing. They would have known only when she then turns to Palamon, naming him for the first time. The balance of the probabilities here, I think, is that Emelia is addressing full size portraits of the actors in character.
Hamlet does not provide such clear clues for determining whether the pictures of King Hamlet and Claudius are full size or miniatures. But there are, again, good reasons to suppose that the portraits are full size. Hamlet could have carried them in, as in the other plays employing the picture comparison trope. But, more probably, they were already hanging on the wall of Gertrude’s chamber. If they were miniatures, to whom did they belong? If they were Hamlet’s, why was he wearing a miniature portrait of Claudius? If they were Gertrude’s, or if the miniature of Claudius was hers, why would she have had a portrait of her current husband in which he looks, in Hamlet’s description, like a “moor,” a “mildewed ear?” The audience would have known no better if the portrait were a miniature.
The scene works better if both portraits are hanging on Gertrude’s wall, where the audience can see them. Both kings no doubt were portrayed as handsome and kingly. No artist would dare portray a living king as a mildewed ear of grain. Neither the King nor the Queen, Claudius and Gertrude, would have accepted such a portrait. And the artist would have been wise to have pre-booked quick passage out of Denmark. The point of Hamlet’s picture comparison, as of much else that occurs in the scene, is that Hamlet’s judgment has been overcome by his fevered imagination. For that point to be made here, the audience had to see the actual portraits.
For whatever it adds, Restoration engravings show the scene acted with two full size portraits hanging on Gertrude’s wall. I’m not ordinarily inclined to put much weight on Restoration staging as evidence of Elizabethan staging, but in this case perhaps it adds a feather (two feathers?) to the scale.
Conclusion
To make a long essay short, I do not believe that properties and scenery were sparse on the Elizabethan stage. Not in London, anyway. They were, in fact, not only abundant but often spectacular. I was perusing Henslowe’s Diary the other day for an unrelated reason. But I was struck by how often the Lord Admiral’s actors bought velvet and satin, copper, silver and gold lace, for their costumes. This acting company, and presumably each of the others, was intent on offering its audience a striking display. Properties and scenery – chariots flying through the heavens, even – would have been very much a part of that display.
And let’s close, somewhat ironically, by noting that we probably have only scratched the subject’s surface. We’ve relied upon two basic sources of evidence, documentary records and the indicational evidence provided by stage directions. Both sources tell us that the other is woefully incomplete. We have, for example, examined in Henslowe’s properties inventory many properties and items of scenery related to Faustus’s performance. Not one of those properties or items of scenery is identified in Faustus’s stage directions. If not for Simon Forman’s report, we would have no idea from Macbeth’s stage directions that Macbeth and Banquo rode through a wood. Stage directions, on the other hand, identify many properties for which there is no documentary record.
The reality is that there must have been a great many properties, and a great deal of scenery, for which neither stage directions nor documentary evidence remain.