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 sixpenny and twelvepenny rooms by 1604. These may have been the same private rooms at varying prices, according as the play was old or new. I take it that you only got a single seat, even in a 'private' room, for your 6d. or 12d., and not the whole room. Overbury or another gives 12d. as the price of the 'best room' as late as about 1614, but in the same year the ordinary scale of charges was greatly exceeded throughout the house on the production of ''Bartholomew Fair'' at the Hope, where a speaker in the induction says, 'it shall be lawful to judge his six-penny-worth, his twelve-penny-worth, so to his eighteen-pence, two shillings, half-a-crown, to the value of his place, provided always his place get not above his wit'. This must have been a quite exceptional occasion, not merely a new play, but a new play at a new house. Similarly, when Richard Vennar brought the gulls to his swindle of England's Joy in 1602, 'the price at cumming in was two shillings or eighteenpence at least'.

A special compartment in one of the galleries was not the only privilege offered to the more fashionable playgoer. He might, at one time or another, sit 'over the stage' and on the stage. De Witt's drawing shows, at the back of the stage, a raised gallery divided into six small boxes, in each of which one or two spectators appear to be placed. It is reasonable to suppose that these are sitting 'over the stage'. *