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 And some or all of those 'over the stage' again, appear to have sat in 'the lords room' or 'rooms'. Of such a room we first hear in 1592, when Henslowe, repairing the Rose, paid 10s. 'for sellynge of the Rome ouer the tyerhowsse' and 13s. 'for sellinges my lords Rome'. The entry rather suggests that this was not so much a room for 'lords', as a room primarily reserved for the particular 'lord', under whose patronage the actors played; but however this may be, it was probably available by courtesy for other persons of distinction. The practice of sitting on the stage itself first emerges about 1596. It was general by the seventeenth century, and was apparently most encouraged at the Blackfriars, where it perhaps lent itself best to the structural character of the building. It was known at Paul's, but was

has a jest of 'one that sat ouer the stage' on a wench in the twopenny room. Farmer-Chetham MS. (seventeenth-century, ed. Grosart, i. 104) has an epigram on Spongus, who 'Plays at Primero over the stage'.]is not on the stage amongst gallants preparing a bespoke Plaudite'.]*
 * [Footnote: roome'. Dekker-Wilkins, Jests to Make you Merry (1607, Works, ii. 292),